Love Estel the Evil Human
by ashlyns
Summary: A little humerous oneshot. Revenge is sweet and Estel gets it in spades after Legolas, Elrohir and Elladan play a mean little prank on him with the intent to scare. The older Elves aren't as tough as they look.


**This is just a little one-shot I wrote. I dedicate it to my niece, Keyara, who tries very hard to scare me back. Bless her. **

**Love Estel the Evil Human**

**One Shot**

Legolas laughed lightly, his musical voice floating over the small garden. Estel bristled and glared at his friend in the dark. "I'm telling the truth." He growled. "I'm afraid of nothing."

"Not Wargs?" Legolas asked. Estel shook his head, his young face set. "Not of death or worse…Elrond?" Again, Estel shook his head but there was a hint of humor on his face at his friend's wise crack. "Come Estel, be serious."

"I am." Estel muttered, swinging his feet in the air. He was about ten and, though Legolas didn't believe him, Estel knew in his heart that he was definitely not afraid of anything. Legolas sighed and stared up at the full moon, peaking out from behind a blanket of cloud.

"Alright." Legolas said, with an air of one finally giving up on a long debate, "I believe you…for now." Estel smiled and nodded. He knew his friend didn't believe him but at the moment it was washed from his mind and he took again to simply enjoying his friend's company.

Hiding in the bushes, the twin sons of Elrond turned to each other in the dark, eyebrows raised. They were each immediately thinking the same thing; so, their little human brother was afraid of nothing? Identical evil smirks crossed both their faces.

Motioning his brother, Elladan led him from the bushes and around into the main hall. They swiftly and silently walked to Elrohir's room and closed the door behind them.

"So, the little nit thinks he's fearless?" Elladan asked, leaning against the door and crossing his arms over his chest. Elrohir sat down on the bed and stretched out, watching his brother closely. "You know what I'm thinking." It wasn't a question.

"Of course." Elrohir answered. He grinned widely. "What do you want to do about it?"

"His ears are getting to big for him." Elladan commented, leaving the door and moving to the window. He leaned against the sill and watched Legolas and Estel moving below, back into the hall. "We should bring him down to size."

"Should Legolas be involved?" Elrohir asked timidly. Elladan turned and surveyed his brother for a moment, thinking.

"You know what, I think he should." Elladan answered.

That night was dark. A storm had blown in and now settled over Rivendell, casting all into eerie dark shadow. The world only came alive when a flash of lightening streaked across the sky. In those seconds of bright light, the world lived and then died when the light disappeared, only to come alive again in the next flash.

Estel rolled over as a particularly loud CRACK split the air above him. Opening bleary eyes, he watched the sky beyond the window and squinted when another flash burned his gaze, illuminating a skeletal tree into his eyelids. Sighing and realizing the storm would keep him awake for a longer time then he wished, Estel rolled over onto his other side and tried desperately to drop back into the dream world he so longed to return to.

As he began to drift off again, back into the worlds where he was older with a scruffy beard…a rider on a large black steed, off to save a princess who had long brown hair and elf ears…tailing after Legolas throwing snowballs at him…the dream world in general where anything was possible, Aragorn thought he heard his door open and close softly.

Opening his bleary eyes again, after just being on the verge of slipping into snow capped mountains dressed in red armor, Aragorn cursed softly under his breath. Lightning flashed again outside his window and three seconds later there was a deafening CRACK and the sky grumbled in protest.

A rushing sound met his ears and Estel sat up swiftly, his heart pounding. It was only the window across the room. It had opened and the curtains were reaching into the room, trying to reach him. Rain pattered onto the sill and dripped into his room, running down the walls and pooling on the cold stone floor.

Estel got up with a pained sigh and crossed the floor, grumbling to the still air around him. As he reached out into the rain to grab the corner of the window, his eyes caught on the tree directly opposite him.

A dark shape was moving in it's branches. Estel squinted through the dark and wished silently that he had Elf eyes. It was so difficult to see sometimes and he knew that, had he been like his family, he would have already identified what the strange, black mass in the tree was.

A fork of lightning illuminated the sky and bathed the tree in light. Estel's heart clenched painfully as the creature shifted ominously and slowly, grotesquely, against all conformidable imagination, began crawling down the tree.

The dark mass was covered in thick black fur, matted and slicked from the heavy rain falling onto it. It moved down the tree face first, one clawed hand and then another gripping branches in it's decent. It moved fluently, like and Elf but no Elf had ever looked so scary.

Slamming the window shut, he latched it and pulled the curtains. Heart still pounding, Estel raced across the room and jumped into the bed and began fumbling with the flint on his bedside table. Lighting the lamp, Estel huddled against the bedpost and trembled violently.

With forced calm, he began to figure out with his mind what that creature could have been. It couldn't have been an Elf, unless…

A shrieking wale from outside made Estel jump and shift his eyes to the window. That creature, it had to be! His heart began to calm slightly though as the wale sounded again. It sounded like…

A scraping noise under his bed made him stop breathing. He listened intently, willing his heart to calm down and stop pounding loudly in his ears. The scraping notice came again. It sounded like a slender hand, with long fingernails moving across the stones beneath his mattress. Whatever was making it began to wheeze painfully…lightly, majestically…

Suddenly, the bed began to shift and bang angrily. Estel yelled out in shock and jumped off it, knocking his lamp to the floor in the process. The flame went out and the room was plunged into darkness as he ran across the room and hit the door with a loud thud.

Something, or someone, was coming at him from behind. Finally he managed to throw the door open and began racing down the dark hallway. In a flash of light, a dark shadow materialized out of the darkness and grabbed him around the waist, hissing.

Without even thinking, Estel slammed his elbow backwards and rammed it into a very solid face. The creature behind him fell back into the wall, growling menacingly, but painfully. Estel raced down the hall and turned the corner, screaming.

A door on his left flew open as he raced past and Elrond poked his head out into the hallway.

"Estel!" He called angrily. Estel skidded to a halt and turned, wide-eyed to his father who had emerged wholly from his study and was now standing with his hands on his hips. Estel raced back and grabbed the Elf by the arm.

"Ada, in my room! There is something in my room! And, outside, a thing…it was crawling…it was…" Estel shook his head, grabbed his father's arm and hung off it, breathing hard. Elrond looked at him critically and finally sighed.

"Come on, let's go look." Closing his study door, Elrond led the way down the hall to Estel's room. When they turned into the dark corridor, Elrond stopped, looking confused. "What happened to the lamps?" He asked, more to himself.

"They were out when I came down here. Maybe it did it." Elrond raised an eyebrow and continued down the hall, seemingly putting the mystery of the darkened lamps out of his mind.

Estel's bedroom door was wide open when they arrived. One side of the wooden rectangle was chipped up from its sudden, hard contact with the wall. Elrond motioned Estel to proceed him but the young human shook his head, grey eyes wide as he peered into the room. Lighting flashed inside, illuminating the bed where blankets lay strewn about on the floor around it. "You first, Ada." He whispered. Elrond sighed and moved into the room. Estel stayed by the door, every once in a while glancing nervously into the dark hall behind him.

Standing at the door, Estel told Elrond exactly what had happened before. Elrond listened and moved around the room, peering under the bed and then moving to the window, squinting into the dark tree and its surrounding ground.

After a thorough search, Elrond couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Slowly, Estel moved into the room and got to his knees beside the bed, peering underneath. Rolling beneath, he began his own little search and found a long dark hair stuck between two cobbles. Pulling it out carefully, he tested it and then sniffed it. It smelled like flowers.

"What happened? We heard a scream." Estel rolled out from under the bed and saw three figures in the doorway. Elrohir, Elladan and Legolas had come to see what the commotion was.

Elrond moved to the bed and helped his human son to his feet. "Estel had a bad dream." Elrond said quietly. Elladan leaned against the doorframe with his arms over his chest.

"Quite a dream." He said with a smirk. Elrond lifted an eyebrow but Estel moved forward, about to show his brother the hair when Elrond interrupted him.

"What happened to your face?" He asked, moving forward worriedly. Elladan straightened, the smirk dying on his face. Elrond reached out to his twin son's face and took it in his hand, running slender fingers over his cheekbone, under his right eye. "You're bruising."

Elladan's eyes shifted to Estel and he shrugged. "I do not know, father." He answered cautiously, pulling away. But Elrond's sharp eyes, like Estel's, were moving to Elrohir's ruffled hair. He passed over this Elf with no comment, but stopped on Legolas.

The Mirkwood Prince's hair was damp, visibly. He looked damp all over and what was more, there were black fibers on his green jacket. Elrond reached out and plucked one off the prince's shoulder.

"And what is this, can anyone answer me?" Elrond asked in a dangerously quiet voice. The three shifted uncomfortably but the damage was done. Elrond's thin hands shot out and caught both the twin's ears, Elladan's right and Elrohir's left. "Legolas, if you know what is good for you, you will follow behind me very closely." Elrond growled.

He began marching down the corridor with the twins; the two younger Elves having to walk awkwardly backwards, looks of pain etched on their faces. Estel moved slowly behind Legolas who was walking stiffly, his shoulders hunched. A small smile was threatening to creep across the young human's face and he let the twins see it plainly as they were pulled into his father's study.

Estel stood outside, back against the wall. Once Legolas was inside the study, Elrond let go of the twins and moved to the door. When he looked at Estel, the young human burst into tears. "You mean they were playing a trick on me?" Estel asked, gasping dramatically for air. The older Elf's face turned a deep shade of scarlet, as though his anger was about to burst his face on fire, and he slammed the door shut.

Estel upped the sounds of his crying as the voice of Elrond rose magnificently inside the room. After a few good minutes, Estel leaned back against the wall and grinned. His grin slowly was replaced with a chuckle and then a laugh and then a cackle.

A few times his father opened the door but Estel, with reflexes needed to survive living with the twins and their friend, Legolas, easily reverted to sobs again until the door was closed.

He had known it was Legolas the moment he had jumped into bed. The way the creature crawled was a style the Prince used often. Though it was a shock to see the Elf crawling down the tree face first, like a goblin, he knew it wasn't impossible. Living in trees his whole life, especially dangerous trees like those in Mirkwood; it wasn't unlikely that Legolas had developed a method of repelling as such. Then there was the cry. Legolas had used it once when Estel had been five, to spoke one of his guards.

Then there was the scraping under the bed. Estel wasn't stupid enough to fall for that. Elrohir had been growing his nails for a long while now, for what purpose, Estel couldn't guess. The hissing wheeze had been to slow and measured to be labored breathing and the sound was escaping through perfect teeth, judging by the rasp and the pitch. Also, if it had been some deadly creature, it would have had a kind of wet influence from saliva build up and the voice pushing it through was melodic…an elf.

The creature in the hall had startled him, but only just. The way it had melted and then materialized from the dark was too fluent to be any normal creature but an elf, who could make themselves near impossible to see if they wished. Also the hands around his waist had been too soft, as though they didn't want to hurt him, to slender and too familiar. Elvish hands if he had ever felt them, and calloused from battles and training.

Now that he had his brothers in trouble, Estel moved back off to his room, planning his revenge.

The next morning dawned bright and early. Elrohir woke at the crack of dawn, still miserable from the night before when his father had yelled at them. The only bright spot on this seemingly dim day was that, the night before, they had successfully scared Estel out of his wits.

Moving to his mirror, Elrohir brushed his hair before moving to his closet, his mind preoccupied with the punishment chores his father had set him. Elrohir opened the closet door and let out a loud, piercing shriek that traveled through Rivendell, reverberating into every shadow and every chasm.

Jumping back, clutching his heart, Elrohir noticed a note on the wardrobe floor. Being careful not to touch the horrifying object inside, he grabbed the note and stepped back from the wardrobe before reading the paper in his hand. Outside, attendants and guards were rushing down the hall to see what had happened.

Elladan was the first to burst into the room, followed by a few guards and then Legolas. "What happened?" He asked, rushing over to his twin's side, face full of concern. Elrohir raised his eyes and looked into the wardrobe, staring at the horror within. Elladan's brow crinkled as he looked at it too before taking the note his brother was offering him. With Legolas looking over his shoulder, he read it outlook.

"**_Love Estel._**" Elladan read. Looking up, he let his eyes drift into the wardrobe as Elrohir whispered, "Evil Human."

Legolas laughed lightly making the twins look back at him. "Seriously, he's an elf ling…child. What can he possibly do to us?" Laughing, the Mirkwood Prince moved towards the door but Elladan's words of caution stopped him.

"You don't know this child." Legolas gulped slightly, smiled, and left for the dinning hall.

At noon the three of them set to work doing the tasks they had been assigned. Legolas had to clean the stable, Elrohir, still shaken from his run in with the wardrobe, had to scrub the floors in the dinning hall and Elladan had help with cooking.

Legolas moved off through the main hallway of the stables, the stalls on either side of him. The horses had been moved to grazing grounds just so he could clean the thirty stalls without interference. Legolas really wished for some company while doing this work and would have welcomed the presence of a horse at that moment.

The first pen he began to work on was at the very back. This end of the stables was dark and no candlelight seemed to penetrate it, but that didn't bother him one little bit. His Elven sight easily helped him navigate his pitchfork through the muck at his feet.

A presence at the other end of the stables, near the door made him halt and straighten. Turning around, he peered off through the barn but there was no one there. It was probably just his imagination. Going back to his work, Legolas was again interrupted by a small snapping sound far behind him. Straightening, he turned again, opened the pen door and peered down the main walkway.

There was no one there.

Putting the pitchfork against the wall, Legolas made his quiet progress out into the main walkway and cleared his throat as the musty, dank, putrid smell of horse manure met his nose. "Hello?" He called out.

His only answer was the call of a bird outside and the shifting beams of sunlight coming in through the many windows near the roof. "Is anyone there?" Legolas called again, moving up the barn towards the main door.

Silence answered him but he knew he was not the only presence in the barn. As he passed one stall a strange, distorted black shape in a stall to his left made him jump sideways in fright. Gaining his composure and feeling slightly stupid, he saw it was just the hairy black suit he had worn the night before while climbing the tree to scare Estel. Stupid piece of clothing, really, and why the twins had it was still an unknown to him. Laughing in relief, Legolas began moving back towards his work when he was again stopped by a sound near the barn door.

A smile crept across his face as the words; "Evil Human" came to his mind. "Estel." He whispered to himself, turning around to look at the barn door. "Okay, Estel." He called out. "I know you're there, you may as well show yourself."

Silence greeted him. Legolas moved off down the isle cautiously but composed. When he reached the barn door and looked around into the deepest shadows of the stalls, he found them empty. A little worried, Legolas turned swiftly when there was a sharp crack behind him and the barn door closed with a snap, shutting off it's beam of light.

Elrohir, who was taking out a bucket of soapy water to dump in the trees nearby, heard the piercing scream from the barn. The sound chilled him. It was a terrified, high pitched, unearthly scream.

Dropping his bucket and beaconing some Elves nearby, Elrohir raced across the leaf strewn ground and pulled open the barn door. Legolas fell out, clutching his chest and panting, his eyes wide and terrified. Elrohir grabbed his shoulders and shook the distraught Elf who didn't respond.

A note fluttered through the open door and onto the ground at Legolas' feet. The Elf didn't move to retrieve it but Elrohir did. He snatched it up and peered at it worriedly. "**_Love Estel_**" it read.

"Evil Human!" Legolas growled, trying to catch his breath.

That night was a quiet affair. The three who were being punished had to eat alone in the back kitchen. It was probably just as well, because if they got their hands on the little human who would be sitting at the table in the main hall, they would have killed him. On the other hand, it might have been better had they been in the main hall, because then they wouldn't have had time to contemplate the fate Elladan had awaiting him.

"We have to get him before he gets us." Elladan said, stabbing his potatoes. He talked as if he had not a care in the world but the others knew differently. It was two down, one to go. "What can we do?"

"I'm out this time." Legolas answered, continuing to make a 'house' with his green beans. "You can do it yourself. I fear retribution."

"Nadorhuan." (Cowardly dog) Elladan hissed at his friend angrily. Legolas didn't answer or make any motion that he had heard him. He simply began constructing a roof on his bean house with his potatoes skins. "Elrohir, you're with me."

"Not today." Elrohir answered. "I'm with Legolas. Estel is a master we have never dealt with before. He may best us all yet…and he's just a child."

"It is not fair." Legolas muttered moodily, staring at his 'house'. "He's an Evil Human."

"So we have heard." Elladan snapped. "Fine. He won't get me." Getting up from the table, Elladan grabbed his plate and moved off to the sink. At the other end of the room, Estel sat listening at the door with a smirk on his face. Well, Legolas and Elrohir had conceded defeat. Now he had to bring down the master of tricksters…it was Elladan's turn to fall from grace. Slinking back into the shadows, he moved off to his brother's room and sat in the shadows, waiting.

Elladan retired to his room shortly afterwards. He wasn't afraid of his little brother…or so he continued to tell himself. Lying down on his bed with his clothes on along with the lights, Elladan closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. A short time later, they all heard the screams coming from his room.

That night, Estel slept soundly, without a disturbance. In fact, all the Elves in Rivendell slept more soundly then they ever had before…except three young elves.

Elrohir, Elladan and Legolas had fortified Legolas' guest room and were now huddled together on the bed. Lamps and candles blazed around the room until it was like day inside, so bright, anyone walking below would have to shield their eyes from the light coming through the window.

On the bed before them was a note, the note that had been left to them at the scene of the last scare attack. They all glanced at it nervously before returning to their vigil of the door, window and dark spaces (Though there were hardly any).

"_**To Elrohir, Elladan and Legolas. I will be back. Love Estel." **_

"Evil Human." Elladan muttered. The other two nodded nervously and shifted anxiously.

**Fin**

**Well, I hope you all liked it. I wrote it at two in the morning. LOL. Remember to review!**


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